Ming Jiajing: Starting from Immortality

Chapter 120 Billions of Wealth, Shanxi Merchants Fill the Lake!
Kill!
Crazy killing!
Crazy slaughter!

For a whole month, more than ten thousand Jinyi envoys were unable to seal their swords in Xishan. Even the Xiuchun swords made of fine iron had to be recast in the furnace by the tens of thousands.

Hundreds of Jin officials were executed or their families were exterminated for huge corruption, and more than ten thousand people were implicated!
Thousands of Shanxi merchants were executed for treason and collaborating with the enemy, and more than 100,000 people were implicated!

The Jinyiwei followed the map and had no choice but to kill. The emperor's decree was that it would rather kill a thousand people by mistake than let one go.

After autumn, there is a lot of fog in the West Mountain, but it is not white fog, but blood-red fog.

Before the butcher's knife came, the families of the merchants from the Shanxi Merchants Gang fled, trying to escape.

But what awaited them was only a dragnet. Wang Chonggu, the governor of Xuanda, who was regarded as a "savior" by many Shanxi merchants, turned out to be the "King of Hell".

The roads in and out of Xishan were completely blocked by the Xuanfu, Datong and Xishan armies, and anyone caught by the border soldiers was handed over to the Jinyiwei.

A saying gradually spread in Xishan: "The Governor-General has a kind heart and cannot bear to see the Shanxi merchants die."

So, the Jinyiwei put all the people sent by the border soldiers to death with the guillotine.

There is no need to try the case or arrest anyone. Just behead the person if their name matches the one on the list.

Such a big movement.

They could block the people but not the news, and the Xishan incident eventually broke out.

The whole country is shocked!

The government and the public are in an uproar!

The public was in uproar!

Memorials from officials from twelve provinces in the two capitals impeaching the Jinyiwei flew into the capital like snowflakes.

He wanted to remove Lu Bing from his position as the commander-in-chief of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and arrest him and put him in prison to interrogate him!
The fear that the Jinyiwei brought to officials across the country exceeded the shadow left by the Jinyiwei on officials during the Hongwu period.

It's only autumn, and the Jinyiwei have committed several major crimes, with more killings and a wider scope of impact each time. If they wait until winter, all the court officials will be killed.

brutal!

How cruel!

Even Zhang Juzheng's cabinet could no longer sit still and collectively came to Yuxi Palace to request an audience with the emperor.

The gates of Yuxi Palace remained open, and the requests for an audience from the ministers were not rejected.

After Zhang Juzheng, Gao Gong, Li Chunfang and Chen Yiqin entered the hall, they found that the emperor was not meditating, but sitting at the imperial desk, watching the affairs of state attentively.

Strange thing!

Zhang Juzheng and the other three thought to themselves that this was a strange thing.

After so many years in the court, the cabinet ministers and ministers actually all knew that although the emperor did not attend court, he was a diligent person, but he did not govern in front of others.

Gao Gong knew in particular that the emperor would review all the income and expenditure of the Ministry of Revenue, and if there was even a mistake of one or two taels of silver, the emperor would send people from the Imperial Household Department to inquire.

The emperor suddenly stopped "playing tricks" and "pretending to be mysterious", and the four ministers were obviously not used to it.

Afterwards, Zhang, Gao, Li and Chen realized that there must be something wrong when things were abnormal, and anything that could cause the emperor to have "evil" behavior must be an earth-shattering event.

This audience may not be so smooth.

"May our Emperor be well!" Zhang Juzheng and his cabinet praised the Emperor upon seeing him.

Zhu Houcong waved his sleeves without even raising his head, and Huang Jin led the young eunuchs to immediately bring four embroidered cushions for the elders to sit on.

Zhang Juzheng had no room to sit down, but Huang Jin spoke first, "There are too many case files, Lord, please sit down and take a look." The young eunuchs brought in boxes of blood-stained boxes. The blood stains that turned dark red after solidifying set off the large mahogany boxes, which were extremely gorgeous.

Huang Jin opened the box and said, "These are all what the emperor has seen. The ministers should also take a look."

Zhang Juzheng looked at the account books and letters in the box, all of which were sealed in blood, as if the entire box was soaked in blood. After thinking for a while, he sat down.

Gao Gong, Li Chunfang and Chen Yiqun then sat down and picked up the blood-stained account book. Although the blood had dried long ago, there was still an inexplicable sticky feeling in their hands.

It was as if he had reached out and fished it out of a pool of blood.

After the account book was soaked in blood, many pages became stuck together, but after special treatment by the Jinyiwei, they can basically be opened. For some that cannot be opened, one can more or less understand them by combining the contents of the previous and next pages, without affecting the viewing experience.

"In August of the 40th year of the Jiajing reign, new grain came on the market. Tatar Khan Altan wanted to buy 40 million catties of polished japonica rice for 10 million taels of silver. The cost was about 1 million taels of silver, and the gross profit was 9 million taels of silver.

The payment will be settled after three months!"

Seeing this, Zhang Juzheng’s eyes suddenly widened.

What is excessive profit?

This is called profiteering!
They could earn nine times the difference between buying and selling. No wonder the Shanxi merchants dared to risk being implicated along with their entire clan and commit treason.

I'm afraid that in the minds of Shanxi merchants, the "Ming Dynasty Law" does not exist at all.

The price of japonica rice, which was five cents per dou, became five taels of silver per dou when sold on the grassland.

Even Zhang Juzheng was tempted by the profit.

Moreover, the payment will be settled in three months.

Zhang Juzheng silently calculated the length of time the Tatars would spend looting in the south each year, which was roughly about two months.

If the Shanxi merchants were really allowed to transport these 40 million kilograms of grain to the grassland, the 50,000 Tatar cavalry would march south in an instant, plunder the Ming Dynasty for two months, and return just in time before the grassland freezes before December.

This also explains why Altan Khan promised such huge profits to the Shanxi merchants. It turns out that the Tatars were also thinking about doing a business with no capital.

They ate the grain brought by the Shanxi merchants who colluded with the enemy and plundered the Ming Dynasty, and then used the looted wealth to pay for the grain.

It not only solved the problem of food shortage in the grassland, but also trained soldiers and at the same time threatened and coerced the Ming court to hand over Bahanaji.

If it weren't for the distinction between friend and foe, Zhang Juzheng would have applauded Altan Khan's wishful thinking.

However, as the mortal enemy of the Tatars and the target of plunder by Aldan Khan, Zhang Juzheng's cabinet was in an extremely bad mood when looking at the correspondence between Shanxi merchants and the Tatars and Aldan Khan.

As a cabinet minister, he has some understanding of Mongolian.

The Tatars are hateful, and the Shanxi merchants are even more hateful. If it weren't for the Shanxi merchants supplying food to the Tatars, why would the Ming Dynasty suffer from Tatar looting every year?

In addition to doing business with the Tatars in the north, Shanxi merchants also did business with Yilibali in the west, and had business dealings with the Mughal Empire further west.

Not only in the west, but also in the Jianzhou Jurchens and Goryeo in the east, and even in Japan across the sea, the traces of Shanxi merchants were spread all over the east, north, and west sides that were hostile to the Ming Dynasty.

The merchants of Shanxi are trying every possible way to bring about the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

When a whale dies, all things come to life. Do Shanxi merchants dare to have such a grand dream?

Zhang Juzheng suddenly understood the behavior of the Jinyiwei in Xishan. If the Shanxi merchants were like this, he could also roughly imagine the situation of the deeply corrupt officialdom in Xishan.

Xishan deserves to be purged. No matter how many people die, it should be regarded as a rotten piece of flesh from the Ming Dynasty that should be cut out.

Looking at the account books one after another and flipping through the old accounts year after year, Zhang Juzheng was deeply impressed by the wealth of Shanxi merchants. He memorized one number after another in his mind. By the time he finished reading the last account book, Zhang Juzheng was already numb.

Over the past few decades, Shanxi merchants have made profits of over 10 billion taels of silver!
(End of this chapter)